Thursday, December 09, 2010

Pos Malaysia gets white knight

SYED MOKHTAR TO THE RESCUE. The world's richest Malay has emerged as the odds on favourite to capture Khazanah Nasional Bhd's 32.2 per cent stake in Pos Malaysia Bhd.

A decision on the sale is expected soon. It could cost the tycoon, whose family hails from Bukhara in modern day Uzbekistan, about RM700 million.

Syed Mokhtar is experiencing a renaissance of sort, after being kept out of the loop by the Abdullah Badawi administration.

It hasn't been a good year for Pos Malaysia, being hauled up by the Parliment's Public Accounts Committee. Syed Mokhtar will be expected to do what he has done in DRB-Hicom - haul up the deadwoods, and turn the rank and file into a fighting force ready for war! Syed Faisal Albar, a former CEO of NST, is the current group MD of Pos Malaysia.

50 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Bro, before people said Syed Mukhtar hails from Yemen. Now you say he is from Bokhara. The family hails from Uttar Pradesh in India. Just like Kalimullah. All Malays. Richest Malay is Sultan of Brunei. Najib is also rich. He has RM. he he he.

Not everybody would have the guts to pull this off given the baggage POS M'sia has...union and all.For S.Mokhtar, it is very synergistic and a key component of logistics for his greater scheme of things in logistics.This is the most efficient LAST MILE yet to exist in Malaysia.I sincerely hope that he would apportion a percentage of POS to the employees to take ownership and together share the benefits of and build it to be a Business we Malaysians can be proud of.The business model is there around the world like UPS, Deutch Pos- DHL,Dutch Pos and even Pos Canada.All the best Tuan Syed.

... the posting industry is a rough gem that need re-polishing. I do believe that in my own personal views. Best of luck to Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar and I for one person will be watching with interest of how it can be uniquely turn around again ...

This is the same man who is proposing to take DRB Hicom private. The same man who monopolises Bernas and owns a fair chunk of the Iskandar project.Rocky - if one looks at his debt level accumulated to acquire all these projects the quetion of sustainability arises. How long can he sustain the debts when his cash flow does not meet the interest payments?

I thought Malaysia was moving away from concentrating economic power into the hands of a few - or in this case the hands of one man.

If Syed Mokthar gets into POS Malaysia, and when he checks about Transmile, he will find out that Transmile major revenue churner into China was the transport of drugs to the mainland. what will he do then??????

Latuk Locky: Syed Mokhtar is reinventing himself again, with the help of people like u. His family is not from Uzbekistan lah. His origins are from Yemen, the Albukhary clan. Of course he will try to deny this now.

Postal rates were raised again this year, in some cases by 100% when they had to write off hundreds of million in their investment in now bankrupt Transmile Plc (where Ling Liong Sik was Chairman and allowed to resign from the fiasco without being charged with dereliction of duties!!).

Yet it looks like Pos M'sia can't make a decent profit or return on capital. So, the Taxpayer is being ripped off again.

Also, why are we perperuating more monopolies and creating more monopolists? When this Bukharan or Indian or Uzbekistani takes over you can bet postal charges will go up again!

I am more concern about why Pos Malaysia needs to be bailout and why those involved in the collapse of the Pos Malaysia are not prosecuted? It does not makes sense why such a monopolistic corporation can go down the drain. Has any forensic audit been done just like Sime Darby or is the government happy just to be a bystander? It really does not matter who takes over the corporation as long as he is a Malaysian. However, the only way to turn around the corporation is to downsize the staff, replace with more efficient staff and operate like any efficient bank....kick out the dead woods, sadly, there are many in that corporation!

Pos Malaysia is out-dated.They are surviving from thousands of parcels...especially from Indo workers.Letters and post cards are gone.And like all Govt Depts...Pos Malaysia is over staffed and slow.I have a strange feeling..this Syed Mokhtar is ever ready bto help UMNO B...for reasons he knows best.All his buy ups are loosing ventures and cannot make money at all.Why is he doing this?We all can guess....don't we?Only change of Govt. will reveal so much truths and shock many Malaysians.

Better Syed Mokthar than the Naza Group. Syed Mokthar has delivered on all fronts. He is indeed the real deal. And hello, his family hails for Uzbekistan lah, not Yemen, but that is not to say that he doesnt have YEMENI blood somewhere along the line.

Syed Mokhtar is a generous entrepreneur. Yes, he makes money but he gives back to the community in a big way. Pos was good to steal Syed Feisal from NSTP. Syed Feisal had put NSTP in a good footing. I know because I was there but already retired. He bridged the editorial and management. He turned nstp from a big loss to profits; staff gets consisten bonus now, also renovated nstp offices make it real canggih without big investment. The only problem is the editorial side of nst. Always think they are great. I heard the circulation for nst now is at a low of 80k per day. Sinar harian lagi bagus. Malu lah. Hidup Harian Metro!!! HArian Metro is subsidizing nst’s mess.

Make sense for TSM as he can pump in bank muamalat into the post offices. History of TSM shows a mix of investment philosophies. One is ala Vincent Tan where he shuffles his assets around to make a lot of money without creating instant value to the businesses. The other is to actually create value to the business; but he takes a darn long time to do it. Maybe, the latter fits into how he is going to improve the situation at Pos. But I see Pos has made some improvement. It has remained profitable and the recent results show a big jump in revenue and profits. Only had to contend with noises from ungrateful former chairman. Said Faisal had to inherit a lot of mess including Transmile. He is a good CEO but let’s see whether the new Arab shareholder will work well with the Arab CEO.

Make sense for TSM as he can pump in bank muamalat into the post offices. History of TSM shows a mix of investment philosophies. One is ala Vincent Tan where he shuffles his assets around to make a lot of money without creating instant value to the businesses. The other is to actually create value to the business; but he takes a darn long time to do it. Maybe, the latter fits into how he is going to improve the situation at Pos. But I see Pos has made some improvement. It has remained profitable and the recent results show a big jump in revenue and profits. Only had to contend with noises from ungrateful former chairman. Said Faisal had to inherit a lot of mess including Transmile. He is a good CEO but let’s see whether the new Arab shareholder will work well with the Arab CEO.

my only take....sell of POS Msia is percursor to GE....gomen need money for election to buy off votes....use TSM to get rid of deadwoods and lay blame at his feet before election and he get the unlocked value of POS Msia assets after busting the union and getting rid of sleeping mgmt...